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Arts, Briefly; Klimt Owner Looks Ahead

After the recommendation of an Austrian arbitration panel that five Gustav Klimt paintings looted by the Nazis be returned to the heir of the Jewish family that owned them, the 89-year-old owner said yesterday that she was willing to sell some of them to the Austrian government. "I would like the paintings to be in museums for people to see them," the owner, Maria Altmann, said in an interview from her California home. "If Austria could buy the portraits I'd be delighted for them to stay there. They were natural treasures." After seven years of litigation and argument, the arbitration panel on Monday resolved the case, one of the biggest involving art looted by the Nazis. Mrs. Altmann's family owned the two portraits and three landscapes before they fled Austria when the Nazis took power there in 1938. The most widely known is a portrait, above, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Mrs. Altmann's aunt. For more than 50 years, the paintings have been displayed in the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna. A delighted Mrs. Altmann said yesterday that she expected many offers for all the paintings and that Austria had expressed an interest only in the portraits. "A lot of people are fascinated by the whole thing," she said. FELICIA R. LEE

Compiled by Lawrence Van Gelder

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A version of this article appears in print on January 18, 2006, on Page E00002 of the National edition with the headline: Arts, Briefly; Klimt Owner Looks Ahead. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe